Pro-European centrist Emmanuel Macron elected French president: Estimates

Pro-European centrist Emmanuel Macron resoundingly won France's landmark presidential election, first estimates showed on Sunday, heading off a fierce challenge from the far-right in a pivotal vote for the future of the divided country and Europe.

The victory caps an extraordinary rise for the 39-year- old former investment banker, who will become the country's youngest-ever leader.

He has promised to heal a fractured and demoralised country after a vicious campaign that has exposed deep economic and social divisions, as well as tensions around identity and immigration.

Initial estimates showed Macron winning between 65.5 per cent and 66.1 per cent of ballots ahead of Le Pen on between 33.9 per cent and 34.5 per cent.

Unknown three years ago, Macron is now poised to become one of Europe's most powerful leaders, bringing with him a hugely ambitious agenda of political and economic reform for France and the European Union.

The result will resonate worldwide and particularly in Brussels and Berlin where leaders will breathe a sigh of relief that Le Pen's anti-EU, anti-globalisation programme has been defeated.

After Britain's vote last year to leave the EU and Donald Trump's victory in the US, the French election had been widely watched as a test of how high a tide of right-wing nationalism would rise.

Le Pen, 48, had portrayed the ballot as a contest between Macron and the "globalists" -- in favour of open trade, immigration and shared sovereignty -- and her "patriotic" vision of strong borders and national identities.

Outgoing President Francois Hollande, who plucked Macron from obscurity to name him minister in 2014, said voting "is always an important, significant act, heavy with consequences" as he cast his vote.

Macron will now face huge challenges as he attempts to enact his domestic agenda of cutting state spending, easing labour laws, boosting education in deprived areas and extending new protections to the self-employed.

The philosophy and literature lover is inexperienced, has no political party and must try to fashion a working parliamentary majority after legislative elections next month.

His En Marche movement -- "neither of the left, nor right" -- has vowed to field candidates in all 577 constituencies, with half of them women and half of them newcomers to politics.

"We will reconstruct right to the end! We'll keep our promise of renewal!" he said during his last campaign meeting in the southern city of Albi on Thursday.

Many analysts are sceptical about his ability to win a majority with En Marche candidates alone, meaning he would have to form a coalition of lawmakers committed to his agenda -- something new under France's current constitution.

Furthermore, his economic agenda, particularly plans to weaken labour regulations to fight stubbornly high unemployment, are likely to face fierce resistance from trade unions and his leftist opponents.

He also inherits a country which is still in a state of emergency following a string of Islamist-inspired attacks since 2015 that have killed more than 230 people.

The vote today followed one of the most unpredictable election campaigns in modern history marked by scandal, repeated surprises and a last-minute hacking attack on Macron.

Hundreds of thousands of emails and documents stolen from his campaign were dumped online on Friday and then spread by anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks, leading the candidate to call it an attempt at "democratic destabilisation."

France's election authority said publishing the documents could be a criminal offence, a warning flouted by Macron's opponents and far-right activists online.

It was the latest twist in an election that has consistently wrong-footed observers as angry voters chose to eject establishment figures, including one-time favourite Francois Fillon, a rightwing ex-prime minister.

Unpopular Hollande was the first to bow to the rebellious mood in December as he declared he would be the first sitting president not to seek re-election in the French republic, founded in 1958.

In the first round of the presidential election on April 23, Macron topped the vote with 24.01 per cent, followed by Le Pen on 21.30 per cent, in a crowded field of 11 candidates.

The results revealed Macron was favoured among wealthier, better educated citizens in cities, while Le Pen drew support in the countryside as well as poverty-hit areas in the south and rustbelt northeast.

Upcoming rare August solar eclipse inspires US postal agency to issue colour-changing stamps!

(Image for representational purposes only)

The commemorative stamp uses special temperature-sensitive inks, 'The Quartz' reported.

The United States is about to witness a rare celestial spectacle in August this year, when for the first time in 38 years, the moon will completely block the solar disk for a few minutes, creating a total eclipse of the Sun.

To mark the rare event, the US postal agency is issuing a first-of-its-kind postage stamp that morphs when touched – changing from the image of a total solar eclipse to that of the moon.

Conceived by graphic designer Antonio Alcala, the colour-changing stamp features two layers of photographs.

The first image depicts a picture of a total eclipse observed in Libya in 2006.

When the warmth of your finger touches the black dot, an image of a full moon emerges.

The commemorative stamp uses special temperature-sensitive inks, 'The Quartz' reported.

On the back of the sheet of stamps, a map of the eclipse's shadow path, which will traverse 14 states as it moves east, from Oregon to South Carolina.

The Total Solar Eclipse stamps go on sale on June 20.

North Korea says detains another American citizen, reports KCNA

North Korea said on Sunday it has detained another American citizen for suspicion of acts against the state, which if confirmed would make him the fourth U.S. citizen to be held by the isolated country amid diplomatic tensions.

Kim Hak Song, who was detained on May 6, worked for the Pyongyang University of Science and Technology, the North`s KCNA news agency said. 

"A relevant institution of the DPRK detained American citizen Kim Hak Song on May 6 under a law of the DPRK on suspension of his hostile acts against it," KCNA said. DPRk is short for the Democratic People`s Republic of Korea, the North`s official name.

A third U.S. citizen, Kim Sang Dok, who was associated with the same school, was detained in late April for hostile acts, according to the North`s official media. 

The Pyongyang University of Science and Technology (PUST) was founded by evangelical Christians and opened in 2010. Its students are generally children of the country`s elite.

The volunteer faculty of PUST, many of whom are evangelical Christians, has a curriculum that includes subjects once considered taboo in North Korea, such as capitalism. The college is an unlikely fit in a country that has been condemned by the U.S. State Department for cracking down on freedom of religion.

No further details were available about the circumstances related to the arrests of the two men associated with the college. A spokesman for the Pyongyang University of Science and Technology was not immediately available for comment.

The reported detention comes as tensions on the Korean peninsula run high, driven by harsh rhetoric from Pyongyang and Washington over the North`s pursuit of nuclear weapons in response to what it says is a threat of U.S.-instigated war.

North Korea has in the past used detained Americans to extract high-profile visits from the United States, with which it has no formal diplomatic relations.

The other two Americans already held in North Korea are Otto Warmbier, a 22-year-old student and Kim Dong Chul, a 62-year-old Korean-American missionary.

Warmbier was detained in January 2016 and sentenced to 15 years hard labour for attempting to steal a propaganda banner.

Two months later, Kim Dong Chul was sentenced to 10 years hard labour for subversion. Neither has appeared in public since their sentencing.

Noise pollution in US is a big threat to protected wildlife areas, says study

A new study says that noise pollution caused by humans is 'pervasive' in the US protected areas, posing a threat to land masses that harbour wildlife and provide places for respite, recreation, and natural resource conservation.

Protected areas in the US represent about 14 per cent of the land mass.

Researchers, including those from Colorado State University in the US, analysed millions of hours of sound measurements from 492 sites around continental US.

The results summarised predictions of existing sound levels, estimates of natural sound levels, and the amount that human-made noise raises levels above natural levels, which is considered noise pollution.

Researchers found that human-made noise doubled background sound levels in 63 per cent of US protected areas, and caused a ten-fold or greater increase in background levels in 21 per cent of protected areas.

In other words, noise reduced the area that natural sounds can be heard by 50 to 90 per cent. This also means that what could be heard at 100 feet away could only be heard from 10 to 50 feet, researchers said.

This reduced capacity to hear natural sound reduces the restorative properties of spending time in nature, such as mood enhancement and stress reduction, interfering with the enjoyment typically experienced by park visitors.

The Remarkable Stories Behind a Few Interesting Photographs (29 pics)

NASA's Hubble telescope captures massive galaxy cluster 6 billion light years away

The Hubble telescope helped show that this arc is composed of two distorted images of an ordinary spiral galaxy that just happens to lie behind the cluster.

NASA's Hubble Telescope has captured a beautiful image of a massive galaxy cluster which is located six billion light years away.

The image shows the extremely faint features which have never been seen before.

Made up of hundreds of galaxies, Abell 370 is located in the constellation Cetus (the Sea Monster). In the mid-1980s high-resolution images of the cluster showed that the giant luminous arc in the lower left of the image was not a curious structure within the cluster, but rather an astrophysical phenomenon – the gravitationally lensed image of a galaxy twice as far away as the cluster itself.

The Hubble telescope, jointly operated by NASA and European Space Agency (ESA), has helped show that this arc is composed of two distorted images of an ordinary spiral galaxy that just happens to lie behind the cluster.

Abell 370’s enormous gravitational influence warps the shape of spacetime around it, causing the light of background galaxies to spread out along multiple paths and appear both distorted and magnified.

The effect can be seen as a series of streaks and arcs curving around the centre of the image.

Massive galaxy clusters can therefore act like natural telescopes, giving astronomers a close-up view of the very distant galaxies behind the cluster – a glimpse of the universe in its infancy, only a few hundred million years after the Big Bang.

The new image of Abell 370 was captured as part of the Frontier Fields programme, which used a whopping 630 hours of Hubble observing time, over 560 orbits of the Earth.

Six clusters of galaxies were imaged in exquisite detail, including Abell 370 which was the very last one to be finished.An earlier image of this object – using less observation time and therefore not recording such faint detail – was published in 2009.

The Frontier Fields programme produced the deepest observations ever made of galaxy clusters and the magnified galaxies behind them.These observations are helping astronomers understand how stars and galaxies emerged out of the dark ages of the universe, when space was dark, opaque, and filled with hydrogen.

Studying massive galaxy clusters like Abell 370 also helps with measuring the distribution of normal matter and dark matter within such clusters.By studying its lensing properties, astronomers have determined that Abell 370 contains two large, separate clumps of dark matter, contributing to the evidence that this massive galaxy cluster is actually the result of two smaller clusters merging together.

Unmanned solar system mission to seek life on Saturn's moons up next on NASA's agenda?

The world of space is one which hold its secrets really close and getting to them is a difficult task. Scientists shouldering that responsibility should know.

NASA, a pioneer in the field of space and aeronautics, has time and again revealed the most amazing facets of the universe to the world.

Keeping space enthusiasts on their toes with all the latest updates regarding the goings on in space, NASA has once more raised anticipations by saying that the space agency is reviewing 12 proposals for future unmanned solar system mission to be launched in the mid-2020s.

Since NASA has always been open to the existence of life beyond our own world, the space agency also said that a new mission to Saturn's moons Titan or Enceladus to find signs of life beyond Earth cannot be ruled out.

The proposed missions of discovery – submitted under NASA's New Frontiers programme – will undergo scientific and technical review over the next seven months, the US space agency said in a statement on Friday.

Selection of one or more concepts for Phase A study will be announced in November. At the conclusion of Phase A concept studies, it is planned that one New Frontiers investigation will be selected to continue into subsequent mission phases.

Investigations for this announcement of opportunity were limited to six mission themes – comet surface sample return; lunar South Pole-Aitken basin sample return; ocean worlds (Titan and/or Enceladus); Saturn probe; Trojan tour and rendezvous; and Venus in situ explorer

"New Frontiers is about answering the biggest questions in our solar system today, building on previous missions to continue to push the frontiers of exploration," said Thomas Zurbuchen, Associate Administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington.

"We're looking forward to reviewing these exciting investigations and moving forward with our next bold mission of discovery," Zurbuchen said.

The New Frontiers Programme conducts principal investigator (PI)-led space science investigations under a development cost cap of approximately $1 billion.

This would be the fourth mission in the New Frontiers portfolio. Its predecessors are the New Horizons mission to Pluto, the Juno mission to Jupiter, and OSIRIS-REx, which will rendezvous with and return a sample of asteroid Bennu.